PATTI ALLES

I have been a personal trainer at Berkshire South for seven years now, and I really enjoy helping clients progress towards their goals.Being a former member of my college’s Field Hockey team, I later added in running to my regular workout routine more than three decades ago to be able to keep up with my two sons. Running quickly became a hobby and I soon added weight resistance to my regimen. That combination was the key to my falling in love with physical training again. I started running road races seriously around 1996, such as the Tufts 10K, and various others throughout the Northeast.

I thrive on the personal goals that are set in running and the social environment of competing in races. I’m an ACE certified Personal Trainer, and am also certified to work with clients who have been diagnosed with MS, Parkinson’s, and spinal difficulties. Every year I attend ACE symposium conferences held in San Diego, CA in order to stay on top of the latest fitness trends and research. I find excitement in discovering client’s specific wants & needs while working to put together a routine that benefits each individual, along with incorporating nutrition, cardio & weight-training. I train clients of all ages and backgrounds, and focus on helping people believe, begin, belong and eventually become healthier and feel successful.

SHAY DONALD

*Don’t wish for it, work for it. *

I was far from an athlete when I was younger. I hated gym class and didn’t play sports. I started cardio kickboxing on a whim back in 2000. I loved it! That is when I fell in love with fitness. I realized that the key to fitness is finding something that you enjoy doing.

No two people are alike, and I train my clients as such. Together we can come up with an exercise program that is perfect for you and your lifestyle. I love being challenged. As a trainer I like to figure out many ways to help you meet your fitness goals.

As a group fitness instructor, I offer something for everyone. I am involved with the Get Fit, Insanity and the TRX programs. I also teach Strength and Balance for Seniors, Boot Camp, Ripped and Instructors Choice.

I have my Personal Training Certification through ACE. I also hold certifications in group exercise, barbell training, boot camp, group kickboxing, Insanity and TRX. I am First Aid, CPR and AED certified.

SANDY FRENCH

I love what I do. Working with people, helping them achieve a better quality of life through functional whole body fitness. I also love to make people laugh. I’m a professional clown! I got into fitness in the late 1980s. When I was younger I always imagined I’d be a Physical Education teacher, but I got married and had a family and I was not able to think about a real career until my two boys grew up. At that point I started to pursue fitness certifications. At the time I was working out at Fitness Express and studying the Bonnie Prudden methodology. Claire Naylor wanted me to start teaching there, but I wanted to get certified first. I continue to learn more and more about the field, I think that’s important. I just went to a Feldenkrais workshop. I love to do workshops like that—it gives me material to bring back to my clients.

Being an athlete, as I matured, I began to realize that injuries suffered in youth come back to haunt you after a while, so it’s important to take care of your body from the get-go. I also started to see that there was a whole population that was being neglected—those folks over 50 years old. Of course, they don’t want to go to “old people” classes, they want to jump into the high intensity classes with the twenty-somethings! But they can get hurt, really anyone can.

I specifically pursued certifications to work with older populations and with people managing MS. My favorite workouts are what I call total body functional fitness. The absolute gold standard is an hour of that followed by an hour of stretching. This is the kind of balanced workout that prepares you for your real life. I like to work with people who are not just interested in losing weight, but with people who are more interested in using exercise to improve their overall health.

In general I just really like working with people, and I love teaching and I wish I’d gotten into this profession a long time ago. I love teaching my Total Body Functional Fitness classes… I give them a whole body workout without beating them up!

MORGAN HANNALECK

“All my life, I’ve dreamt of being happy with my body. At a young age and without proper education or guidance, I started to exercise both obsessively and incorrectly and restricted my food intake. I developed a severe eating disorder and needed to get professional treatment. This experience forever changed my path.In treatment, I started to recover both physically and mentally. I learned how to exercise properly and eat enough to fuel my workouts and achieve the results I had always been seeking. Over time, I gained weight (50 lbs worth!), but ended up looking and feeling the best I ever have.

My experience helped me to realize my life’s purpose; to help others be at peace with themselves. I believed that telling my story could help others, so I published my journey into a book, Somber Suffocation. After that, I received both my personal training and group exercise certifications through the American Council on Exercise, ACE. As I continue to grow and achieve personal goals, I also hope to help others achieve their goals. I want to help people not only improve their physical health but their mental and emotional health as well. Fitness saved my life. It taught me patience, it taught me discipline, and it taught me how to properly take care of myself. If fitness could change my entire life, who says it can’t change yours?”

BOB LANDAU

After leaving an extremely successful career having founded and grown his global marketing company Robert Landau Associates, Bob says that he sold the company in 2000, retired and “did nothing.”

The thing that makes me really tick is my family. I have four children and 14 grandchildren. They all come for the holidays. When I was working and traveling internationally, many, many times I brought my family with me. After I retired, I really did nothing. I just sat around. My son suggested that another career might be good for me, so I got into training. I received certification through ACE and attend four conferences per year to stay on top of new research.

First I thought I was just going to do regular training, but then I saw this whole void here, a void of training for older populations. There was a big research study in the late 90s that showed that bone density can really only be increased by performing regular weight bearing exercises. Up until then cardio exercise was more popular. The timing of this new research led me to start a program called the Lift and Lunch Crunch Bunch (also known as Strength and Balance for Men.) After working out, we go out for lunch and have a different speaker every time. Speakers present for 20 minutes or so on meaningful life issues.

I also teach Strength and Balance for Women, but they are in the morning, so I don’t call them the lunch bunch. In the men’s group, I have 35 men from 65 years old to 92. In the women’s group, more than 40 women in the same age range. These are extremely dedicated groups of people. You know, some of them go in for bone density tests and they see it increasing when they stick with class. This is really gratifying for me. They are getting stronger and healthier, not because I’m a genius, but because they are doing it.

DANIEL LOVE

My name is Daniel Love and I want to be your trainer. What sets me apart from other trainers? I know the struggles that come with being unhealthy. During my childhood I was very skinny. As I reached my teenage years, my body began to change. My metabolism went from very fast to very slow. Weight gain occurred and with that came an unhealthy lifestyle. I would eat what ever I wanted and pretended that I did not care. That I did not care about how I looked or how I felt about myself. The truth was that I did and still do care very much about how I look and feel about myself. I realized I was lying to myself and the only person that could help me is and was me. I started to work out when I was 19. Interesting fact is that I started my life of health at Berkshire South. I found that I love to train, to be healthy. With that came the passion to help others live a healthier life style. It has become my goal to help as many people as I possibly can. It is not my goal to make you train or look like me. It is my goal to help you learn and become the best you that you can be. My name is Daniel Love and I want to be your trainer.

TODD DiMARIO

I’ve been a certified personal trainer in Berkshire county for over a decade. I’ve trained at a number of fitness centers, and gyms in the area. Although I have a strength and conditioning background, a large part of my client base are training for what I refer to as “life strength”. They want to enjoy their lives with a greater confidence, and strength. My goal is to improve their functional strength, and flexibility. This, in turn, improves their balance, and their confidence grows. Maintaining independence is a huge confidence builder. I stress proper form and posture. I am Function Movement Screen (FMS) certified. The Functional Movement Screen lets me assess clients accurately. Once assessed, I can focus my training to help eliminate/improve asymmetries that people have developed through the years. This brings people in to balance. Clean, full range movements, are a big part of what I do. The less wasted movement, the better. It is completely possible to train hard, and avoid injury. There are exercises that have impact. Knowing what those exercises are, and how to sequence them, without injury, is where the finesse of personal training comes in to play.

NICHOLAS WARREN

All my life I’ve played competitive team sports. In high school I played football, basketball, and baseball which kept me in good shape but as I neared the end of high school I realized I would need to find a new way to keep myself fit. My brother inspired me to start to work out in a gym setting and before I knew it, working out became my new “sport.”

I was accepted to attend Alfred State College in upstate New York where I continued to work on my knowledge of fitness until I felt very confident in it. My friends and classmates took notice of my fitness routine and technique and a friend approached my about helping him get more fit. So I brought him to the gym with me and before I knew it, I was training him. I quickly realized that I loved helping him reach his personal goals and that personal training was going to be the right career for me.

I not only graduated with a bachelor’s in Sport Management but also with a deeper passion for physical fitness. And now with my education and passion combined with becoming a certified personal trainer through Action Certification, I look forward to helping my future clients achieve their fitness goals.

JONATHAN WEINRESS

I’ve been in personal training my whole life. I’m not kidding, I had a chin up bar when I was 3. I was lucky because my parents were active in sports and exercise, so I was exposed to it early in life. We did a lot of outdoor activities and I still love being outside. In college I played rugby and a bit of club lacrosse and ultimate Frisbee. After college I had a number of jobs in the service industry, and this combined with my interest in physical fitness ultimately led me to pursue certifications in personal training, and later, in massage therapy.

I’ve been a personal trainer for 15 years in Berkshire County and have worked for 12 years as a massage therapist (Swedish, Deep Tissue, Sports Massage and Reflexology) and I offer all of this at Berkshire South. My goal is to create more space and room in the body and build strength while being aware of balance. Ultimately exercise is about developing body awareness and is really meant to help you move through life more safely and powerfully.

I try to help people develop to their greatest potential of strength, power and endurance. I have a lot of experience working with special needs populations, running courses catering to their medical needs and limitations. I’ve also worked as designer of conditioning programs for the football, girls’ hockey and track teams at Hotchkiss University. I spent 4 years on the Rugby Team at C.W. Post University and I was a member of the Ultimate Frisbee Club Team.